


Fingernails & Feet Fingers

by lonelywalker



Category: The Tick (TV 2017)
Genre: Antennae, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Roommates, Tick is a consenting adult, the question is a consenting adult WHAT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:08:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24167119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: “Arthur,” Dot said. “Please tell me you didn’t drag me across town in rush hour just to show me your boyfriend’s giant wang.”Tick loses his suit. Arthur finds some pluck. Destiny has plans for them both.
Relationships: Arthur Everest/The Tick (The Tick)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 70





	Fingernails & Feet Fingers

“Arthur,” Dot said. “Please tell me you didn’t drag me across town in rush hour just to show me your boyfriend’s giant wang.”

In the forty-five minutes it had taken her to get there following his panicked phone call, Arthur had done almost nothing but think about what, exactly, he was going to say to her. Really “think” wasn’t even the word for it. “Compulsively second-guess” was a smidge more accurate. And every single version was swept clean from his mind the moment she opened the door and took in the state of his living room.

(Which honestly wasn’t too bad, if you did a quick compare-and-contrast with the various states that living room had been in lately.)

Arthur’s fingers tapped at his phone in agitation. He’d been white-knuckling it ever since Dot hung up and it was now possible the plastic had fused with his skin. “He’s not… It’s not… Dot, _look at him!_ ”

Dot looked. The Tick looked back. And waved.

Looking, of course, was not the problem. The thing with the Tick was, it was very hard not to look at him, especially in the otherwise wildly banal environment that was Arthur’s apartment. The problem was that Dot wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees. Or was seeing way too much Tick and not enough of the essential not-Tick-al nature of the situation.

“Is he… cold?” Dot hazarded.

“ _Cold?_ ” Arthur was fast moving into red-faced, high-pitched, arm-flailing territory, which was the kind of thing several therapists had described to him over the years as “unproductive,” “alarming,” and “dangerous for any potted plants in the vicinity.”

Dot, to her credit, ran an appraising eye over the Tick. “Hey. So… How are you feeling?”

“Super!” Tick said. He didn’t give a thumbs up, but his voice somehow did.

“Okay.” She turned and ran an appraising eye over Arthur, leaning in conspiratorially toward Tick. “Any idea why my brother’s turning crimson?”

Tick’s too-blue eyes narrowed. His too-insectoid antennae curled forward, as if seeking out answers from Arthur’s vibrations, or pheromones, or whatever antennae actually picked up. Arthur had usually been too squeamish to even crack open his biology textbooks. 

“My guess is some kind of sidekick evolution,” Tick said in what passed for his serious analytical voice. “Like Pokemon. Or what’s been happening with my suit!”

“You play Pokemon? No, wait, what’s been happening with your suit? Is that why you’re naked?”

Finally. Arthur let out a squeak and did some very forceful pointing that hardly expressed a single iota of what he actually wanted to say. 

“Arthur,” Dot said. “Breathe.”

Arthur lowered his finger. He breathed. “He’s not naked!”

All Dot - paramedic Dot, professional Dot, no-nonsense Dot - did was look at the part of Tick that Arthur had been studiously trying to avoid. “You mean the blanket?”

“No, I mean… He’s always been naked! Or he never has! But now he is!” So much for all his carefully-thought-out explanations.

Fortunately years of siblinghood had at least laid some groundwork for mutual understanding between them. Dot raised her eyebrows. “Are you trying to say you’ve been living with your boyfriend for like a year and you’ve never seen him with his clothes off before now?”

Again, so much to correct, but now it felt like they were getting somewhere. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The suit he’s been wearing… It’s not a suit. It’s _him_. So if he doesn’t have his suit on, it’s like… It’s like you or I just degloved our whole bodies. Which is worth calling a paramedic for, right?”

Tick was looking at his hands in quiet puzzlement, too shy to ask. Later, Arthur was bound to find him hunched over a dictionary, forgetting what he’d even meant to look up, but nevertheless delighted by the results. 

“Okay,” Dot said, with the air of someone who’d decided to combat insanity from the inside, or maybe just someone who spent too much time with a talking boat, “but are you sure the suit wasn’t a suit? I mean clearly we always saw his face. That’s never been blue. And it’s not like he’s dribbling blood and goop everywhere.”

“He never took it off and it already evolved twice, so what do you think?”

All the questions that were doubtless going through Dot’s mind were ones that had kept Arthur awake on more than a few nights at first. “It… evolved?”

“Yeah, Dot, it evolved. And now it evolved into this, apparently. While we were out on mid-afternoon patrol.”

“Well, this isn’t bad. I mean he could do with some pants, but otherwise…”

“And what about next time, Dot? We’ve gone from a rock-hard exoskeleton to… to... “ Arthur’s mouth wanted to say things like “soft” and “warm” and “vulnerable” and his mind really, really didn’t want it to go there. “What if next time it really is all blood and goop? I don’t want to be scraping Tick off my floor with a spatula.”

“I would clean up my own goop, Arthur!” Tick said brightly. Keeping the apartment tidy was something they’d really been working on lately, even though Arthur had resigned himself to redefining the gaping hole in his brickwork as a boho-chic urban design feature.

“That’s… that’s great, Tick. But we need to figure out what’s going on with you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Dot frowned and snapped on some latex gloves from her pack. “What was your deal again? You’re indestructible?”

“Nigh invulnerable!” 

“Right.” She prodded Tick’s bulging deltoid and ripped open a sterile needle. “Hold still, lemme just…”

Tick blinked his big blue eyes at her, and she stabbed him. The needle broke. So did her fingernail. Tick lit up with a thousand-watt smile. “I think your needles are need _less_ ,” he said.

Dot sucked on her injured finger and pointed another accusingly at Arthur. “Okay, I don’t know what I expected. But what did _you_ expect? I’m not great at diagnosing problems that don’t come with gaping wounds. Let AEGIS check him out. Or Dangerboat.”

“Nuh-uh.” Arthur straightened his glasses. “AEGIS might be like fifty percent less sinister now Hobbes has gone, but I’m still not giving them the chance to start poking around with Tick. And DB has… you know, some boundary issues. Plus Overkill probably doesn’t want Tick dick on his danger table.”

Dot held his gaze. “Tick dick,” she said with that bright kind of utter despair for the world and everything in it that was uniquely Dot, before turning back to Tick. “Okay, I’m not recommending you go jumping over buildings with that thing flopping around, but it looks like you still have your powers.”

“Neat!”

“And I really have to go do other things, like find a nail file and bleach my brain. Call me if anything else weird happens.” She stopped. “Weird as in, weirder than having a big blue amnesiac boyfriend with antennae and no pants, or raising baby Atlantean lobsters in your bathtub.”

Arthur wanted to point out that those parameters pretty much ruled out everything bar an interdimensional gateway to hell materializing in his icebox. He also wanted to correct that whole “boyfriend” thing without making too big a deal of it in front of Tick. What he did was say, “Thanks Dot,” and lock the door behind her.

“Arthur,” Tick said. “I have fingernails. And feet fingers!”

“Toes,” Arthur corrected as he automatically refilled the coffee maker. Normal is what normal does. Normal makes coffee. Normal uses standard English. Normal does not spend time trying to casually bring up the topic of one’s big blue buddy’s big not-very-blue penis. “Tick, do you… Do you remember having these before? Does it seem strange to you?”

Tick’s forehead crinkled. “Remembering isn’t my forte, chum.” But his fingernails lightly scraped over his bare thighs. “Should it feel strange?”

“I don’t know, Tick. Maybe for you it’s just like getting a new haircut.”

Tick’s antennae flexed and he raised an exploratory hand to the tufts of brown hair on his head. “Did I get a new haircut?”

“Um, maybe?” It probably wasn’t impossible for Tick to have always had that hair and skin under his suit this whole time. Even if the thought left Arthur feeling in need of a shower. “Anyway, what’s important is you feel okay. You’re not in pain or… Or goopy.”

“I feel great!” Tick said, just slightly less ebullient than usual. He popped up to his feet and the floorboards groaned. “Evening patrol?”

“Yeah, you’re going to need some pants before we go patrolling anything.” Arthur looked around for his phone before realizing it was still half-embedded in his hand. “Listen, I’ll text Kevin, see if he’s got some big sweatpants you can borrow, then we can patrol tomorrow morning and go shopping for… Uh, I don’t know. We’ll find out where Overkill gets all his tactical stuff with a zillion pouches and straps.”

He expected an argument. Or at least Tick’s style of arguing, which was to barrel through anything that opposed him, including Arthur and front doors. But Tick sank down onto the couch, quietly contemplating his knees. 

Arthur dealt with this as best he could, which involved a text conversation with Kevin that included way too many emojis and updates on how Sam and Phoebe’s geometry homework was going, and then making coffee, and then handing Tick the pot and joining him on the couch.

“Arthur,” Tick said, his big mitt-like hands wrapped around the glass pot, “is everything okay?”

Yes, obviously this was his life. His roommate’s skin fell off and people’s first reaction was to worry about Arthur having a panic attack, or having an anxiety attack, or doing something crazy like putting on a wingsuit and becoming a superhero. 

“Everything’s fine, Tick. Just… Do you want a blanket or something?”

Tick glanced at the blanket that was draped over the back of the couch. “It’s not bedtime.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” Arthur took a breath. “Tick, do you know what sex is?”

Tick grinned, then barked out a hearty laugh. “Ha! Arthur! Of _course_ I know what sex is.”

Arthur had never been more convinced he didn’t. “You said that about wasabi too.”

“And what a refreshing experience that was! Lil green gut grenade! This old noggin’s never been clearer!”

“Uh huh. So Tick… Usually when we’re around other people, we cover up our private parts, okay? So that no one gets offended, or gets the wrong idea.”

Tick had developed an exceptionally good paying-attention face. So good that Arthur was never very sure what penetrated his skull. “And the right idea would be...?”

“The _right_ idea?” Arthur backtracked over his words. “Uh, just that… That bodies are natural and everyone has one, and being naked doesn’t necessarily have to be sexual.”

Tick nodded. “I know that, and you know that… So we both have the right idea!”

Sometimes living with Tick was like being in charge of a particularly clever toddler who loved posing tricky philosophical questions almost as much as he loved sticking his fingers in electrical sockets. 

“Right,” Arthur repeated, with the feeling he’d just been outwitted and was about to realize that his wallet, watch, and shoes were missing. He grabbed the TV remote. “Okay, let’s just find something dumb to watch and sit tight.”

Beside him, Tick wordlessly arranged the blanket on his lap. Arthur felt a twinge of shame, like he’d wandered into the Amazon rainforest and started demanding that isolated tribes wear Levis.

“Tick,” he said, flicking through dozens of channels on silent (had Walter somehow signed him up for a pro wrestling cable package?). “Did you hear Dot called you my boyfriend? Twice.” His tone was balanced just right, so he could tip into laughter at the absurdity of it all if need be.

Tick, then as now, didn’t react with much of anything. “I am the Tick,” he said helpfully.

“Yeah, I know. Dot knows. But I guess she just assumed…”

“Joan calls us partners,” Tick interrupted. “I like that better. But Joan said it’s the same thing as boyfriends, like cottage pie is just shepherd’s pie, and blender neutral.”

“Gender. Gender neutral.”

Tick frowned. “The shepherd is gender neutral?”

“No, the… I mean, yes, shepherds can be any gender, or no gender I guess, but…” Arthur felt adrift. “Tick, partners can mean a lot of things. Like business partners. Or romantic partners. It’s not all the same.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Well, it _could_... Tick, do you mean that my mom thinks we’re dating?”

Tick eyed him warily. “She knows we’re partners.”

“Yeah, but… Partners like boyfriends. That’s what she said?”

“Partners like… Like us, Arthur.” Tick’s fingers worried at the edge of the blanket. “Joan said I don’t need to keep pretending I sleep on the couch, that she and Walter accept you for who you are. But I don’t understand what you being a superhero has to do with the couch?”

Arthur switched off the TV, never finding out if the giant panda man would somehow triumph over the ancient Mayan warrior. He took a breath, trying to let all the puzzle pieces settle in his brain, trying not to fixate on the absolute earnestness of Tick’s clear blue eyes. “Tick,” he said, “I’m going to say something, but you have to tell me if you don’t completely understand, okay?”

A lot of the time it seemed like Tick got by in much the way Arthur got through conversations in Spanish, latching onto the few words he knew, plus a whole lot of nodding and smiling. So Arthur said it as simply as he could:

“My family thinks that you and I are having sex.”

He waited, bracing himself for the astonished “Right now?!” he knew was coming. 

But Tick didn’t seem astonished at all. Didn’t even seem surprised, or confused. Just kept on picking at the seam of the blanket. “Why aren’t we having sex?”

Arthur felt the sudden rush of adrenaline like he was in freefall. “Why… Do you _want_ to have sex, Tick?”

“I thought…” Tick often seemed like an exchange student (from Mars) but none more so than now. An exchange student who’d been given a very poorly translated orientation pack. “I thought that we… But then… That you didn’t want to with… With a big blue yeti.”

“You’re not a yeti, Tick,” Arthur said automatically. Seeing Tick struggle with something never failed to give him sympathy anxiety. “You’re beautiful. You always were. I just thought that you… Honestly, I have a hard enough time trying to talk to guys who I’m a hundred percent sure have a penis. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, or make you do anything you didn’t understand, or didn’t want to do.”

Tick’s antennae curved. He let the blanket go. “I want to do everything with you, Arthur.”

Arthur swallowed, an ache of yearning passing right through him and settling down low in his belly. “Yeah, but do you really mean that, or do you just mean you like hanging out with me and hugging and letting me explain Vin Diesel movies to you?”

“Arthur… Does Destiny tell you when you want to kiss someone?”

Arthur took a moment. _Did_ Destiny tell him? At least, in the way that Tick would understand it? “I’m not sure if it’s Destiny, Tick. And I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone. But if I want to kiss someone, I think about it a lot, and… And I start feeling really warm and good, but anxious too…”

“Crinkly?” 

“Yeah. Kind of crinkly. Like the best thing or the worst thing might happen, and you don’t know until you try.”

“What happens when you try?”

Arthur couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“Arthur!” Tick cried, aghast. “But you’re a superhero! You must have a love interest, chum! A plucky reporter, or a whip-smart science lady, or-”

“Or a big blue amnesiac who just found out he has toes.” Somehow, the deeper they edged into the absurdity of it all, the more relaxed he felt. “I like guys, Tick. Or, I like one guy. I like him so much that I’d still be happy if we never kissed, just because I like spending every single moment of the day with him.”

He’d strayed off course, away from absolute clarity, where Tick tended to lose focus. But now Tick just met his eyes almost shyly and said: “Does that mean I can kiss you?”

And Arthur definitely said “yes” or meant to, but the sound either never exited his throat or never reached his ears, and it didn’t matter because the Tick was kissing him, and he was kissing the Tick, all in exactly the joyous mess he could’ve predicted would come from two people who were crazy about each other (or crazy at least) but only knew about kissing as some abstract activity done by other, more conventionally attractive people. Which meant it was wet and breathy and they somehow had more teeth than should reasonably be shared by two men, and for maybe only the second time in his life, Arthur’s brain interpreted all those rushing hormones as exhilaration rather than panic. 

He wanted to touch Tick everywhere, all that skin (which was curiously hairless now that his fingers were investigating it) tinged blue by starkly luminous veins, his nipples and navel (which probably had biological or taxonomic implications that Arthur wasn’t going to start pondering now), his hair… Arthur’s fingertips bumped up against where hair and skull met antenna. “Can I?”

Here he could almost feel Tick thinking, just as he wondered whether this was like Tick asking to gently caress his eyeballs.

“I’m not sure, chum,” Tick said. “But let’s just…”

Tick’s oversized hand grasped his, guiding his fingertips to brush ever-so-softly over one antenna. Arthur instantly felt the shiver that went through Tick, the way his breath caught and his antennae went rigid… “Good?” he asked, not daring to continue. “Or…?”

Tick seemed dazed. “Sorry, chum,” he said in a distracted murmur, “I’ve come over all soapy-eyed.”

“Still not sure if that’s good.”

Tick’s gaze slid over to him and Arthur held his breath, sure Tick was going to snap out of this - whatever this was - and loudly declare something alliterative about justice and evildoers, before ducking out onto the fire escape and bounding across the city. But instead Tick’s free hand took his. 

“Arthur, when you do that, I feel it… here.” Here was under the blanket. _Here_ was stiff and hot and Arthur felt his suit pants getting cramped. “Is that wrong? Am I wrong?”

“Oh God, Tick, no! No, you’re not wrong.” Arthur was wriggling out of his suit before he could overthink it, or really think about it at all. Reassuring Tick overcame any possible objection, including how every single time he’d got remotely naked in front of anyone else had been an exercise in shame and humiliation. He got the jacket off before grasping one of Tick’s big mitts in both of his. “You know what? Let’s go to the bedroom, okay? This couch isn’t even big enough for you.”

“I’m not supposed to be in the bedroom.”

They’d established a lot of ground rules for a reason. Ground rules that presupposed that Tick was about as responsible as a month-old puppy with the bulk of a rhinoceros and the spatial awareness of… well, a rhinoceros-sized month-old puppy. Ground rules that also presupposed Arthur wanted to be able to sleep until his alarm went off, and not just until whenever Tick got bored with the morning news. 

“You can be in the bedroom, Tick. Just don’t break anything. Including me.”

And then he had a naked man in his bedroom. A naked man who wasn’t doing something implausibly athletic and sweaty on his laptop screen. Assuming Tick counted as a man and not an arthropod… At least he didn’t have anything resembling an exoskeleton anymore. Just skin and muscle - so much muscle - and antennae and a half-hard cock and, okay, no one who theoretically walked in on them (Arthur shut the door firmly) was going to buy any rationale for Tick not being a man. However potentially narrow-minded that might be.

He busied himself by getting free of his suit and underwear, and sat down on the bed. (What were the chances of Superian deciding to stop by? Hopefully slim.) 

“Is this okay?” he asked. Worrying about Tick freed him up from worrying about himself.

Tick looked troubled. “You’re very exposed to the elements there, fella. Your tiny proportions might be crushed by unknown forces!”

“Unless those unknown forces are cheap shelving, I think I’ll live. Sit down. I want to show you something.”

Tick sat down, making a good show of being extra-extra-careful not to somehow break Arthur’s pillows or comforter. Arthur took one of his hands - human-like hands, complete with fingernails - and pressed it to his chest, to his heart.

“You’ve got mighty pistons chugging away in there, Arthur. Is that where all the moxie comes from?”

“No, I mean… maybe? But… Here, Tick. Touch me here.”

He expected questions and a furrowed brow, or for Tick to just poke him hard in the pec (anatomically speaking, Arthur knew he had to have a pec, even if it didn’t much look like it). But Tick brushed his thumb ever-so-lightly over Arthur’s nipple, his blue gaze riveted, and, as Arthur felt a new heat flicker and curl in his belly, Tick glanced down. “Oh,” he said, curious. “Everything makes it perk up its little head?”

“Uh, not everything, Tick.” Arthur pushed back his glasses, trying not to focus too hard on the whole “little” aspect. “But we can find out what feels good for you. And what feels good for me. Everyone’s different.”

“Different,” Tick echoed, and he was still looking down between Arthur’s legs as if trying to work out something especially complex, like what a spoon was for.

Arthur looked too, although trying to compare himself and Tick on any scale was going to leave him feeling inadequate. Tick could probably even outscore him on a few SATs. Since there was no short explanation for circumcision that wasn’t going to leave Tick horrified and possibly having to have _words_ with his mom, he just nodded and agreed: “Different.”

Tick made a noise that might have been appreciation.

“Can we kiss again?” Arthur asked. It might be nice to get to the point where he didn’t have to ask so carefully. A point where he wasn’t fretting about Tick not wholeheartedly consenting to absolutely everything they were doing… or about Tick getting a bit too enthusiastic and crushing some very sensitive body parts. 

Tick, though, was curling warm fingers around Arthur’s cock as tentatively as if it was a fearful baby mouse that needed to be escorted home by a helpful superhero. And honestly Arthur needed to find some better things to compare his penis to if he was going to stay hard. Or maybe not, the way Tick was stroking him, sensation radiating out like lightning through his thighs and belly.

Arthur slipped his arm under Tick’s and touched him, clasping a hand around his thick shaft and feeling the steady pulse and growing heat. He’d never ever touched someone else like this, and even if he had, they couldn’t have prepared him for the Tick. _Tick dick_ , he thought, and tilted his head against the big bulge of Tick’s shoulder and smiled. 

“Does this seem familiar?” he said finally, buzzing with the steady pleasure of Tick’s hand on him as he found a wonderful rhythm, watching Tick’s foreskin slide over the slick, swollen head of his cock, feeling Tick’s little gasps and sighs. “You must’ve done this before.”

“Must I?” 

“I mean, assuming you had these body parts before, then… Yeah, Tick. You really think you were going around for years all big and blue and gorgeous, and you never found anyone to…”

Tick shifted just a little, uncomfortable. “It’s always been us, Arthur. You and me. And Destiny!”

“Right, right. But before…”

 _Before_ was still a nebulous concept for the Tick. And in many ways Arthur had to agree. Maybe there was no before. Could the world - even a world jaded by Superian and the Flag Five and dozens more superheroes - really have been oblivious to someone like the Tick? AEGIS still hadn’t come down on whether Tick was human, alien, android, or genie. 

“I thought about before, Arthur.” Tick’s voice was soft and serious, his hand stopping its movement. “I thought about if I had someone before, someone like you with brains and pluck. But if you hit your tiny head and forgot about me, I’d do anything to bring you back home. No one’s done that for me. So… So either there was no one, or there was someone who didn’t really care.”

“Oh Tick, don’t…” Arthur patted his arm. “You know what, you’re right. It’s always been us. That’s what matters.”

But whenever Tick put together that many thoughts, with hypotheticals and conditionals and logical conclusions, it was like the barometric pressure changed in the room and storm clouds were brewing somewhere around the light fixtures. 

“Arthur, you’re shivering!” Tick snapped out of it, as alert as if someone had offered him tiny cheese cubes on cocktail sticks. “Get under the blanket, small soldier, and I shall protect you from all forms of tempestuous temperature-related trickery.”

Arthur carefully slid off his glasses, pondering the concept of Tick trying to punch hypothermia, and rolled into bed. “We can just cuddle, Tick. It doesn’t have to be life or death.”

“You’re not thinking this through, fella. We’re missing our evening patrol, condemning the lonely streets of this proud city to fall victim who knows what diabolical capers? So Destiny must think our canoodling is even more important!”

“Did Destiny tell you that, or… leave a voicemail?” He had to move over even further to let Tick get under the covers with him.

“She sent a message loud and clear!” 

Arthur nudged in close, letting his hand play over the absurdly chiseled muscles of Tick’s chest and abs, and finally close over that insistent erection. “You think Destiny made your suit disappear because she wants us to fuck?”

Tick’s antennae somehow expressed grandmotherly levels of disappointment in his language.

“...to canoodle?” Arthur hurriedly amended.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense!”

Arthur was stroking him, getting into the rhythm of it again, slow and easy. “There’s one other thing that makes sense, Tick. Your suit disappeared because _you_ want to, you know, do this.”

“Does that make sense?”

“Well, my body changes when I get turned on. When I’m thinking about… making love. Maybe that’s what happened to you too.”

“Making love,” Tick echoed, mercifully leaving the whole “turned on” issue aside. “Is that what we’re doing?”

“Yeah, Tick. If that’s what you want.” The image popped into his head of the single book he knew Tick had read cover-to-cover, and Arthur fervently hoped that Tick had at least seen some vague representations of non-canine sex on TV.

Tick’s hand brushed through his hair, over his ear, along his jawline, exploring, discovering. “Arthur, you know I’m not very good at knowing things.”

Arthur laughed. “Tick. You know things harder than anyone else I’ve ever met.”

The bluish tinge to Tick’s skin might have pinkened just a bit. “Well, I’m not talking about the obvious things, like murder being bad, or butter being tiny. How can I know I want a banana if I’ve never had a banana?”

“You said you wanted to do everything with me,” Arthur said, making a mental note to take Tick to a supermarket. “That you wanted to have sex, right? How did you know that?”

Tick’s gaze flickered, like when he’d been caught breaking something. “Arthur… Does it make sense to want to be inside someone else? To be so close, closer than a hug, that my body is your body, and your body’s mine?

“Um, yeah. I think so. I mean, not in an _Alien_ chestburster kind of way, but yeah.”

“Perhaps we should do some research on your laptop then, chum. I don’t know what this chestburster is, but it doesn’t sound friendly.”

“It’s from a movie, Tick. Not one you’d like.” Arthur had found that, while Tick loved movie nights for their couch-snuggling and popcorn-consuming potential, anything involving a hint of danger left him deeply troubled about just sitting there while well-meaning heroes were assailed by all manner of fiends. “And I don’t think I’ll get anywhere Googling ‘how to have sex with my big blue nigh-invulnerable boyfriend.’ We’ll just figure out what feels good.”

“Boyfriend,” Tick said, as if trying out the word in his mouth.

“You know. Partner. Lover.”

Tick tilted his head so that his antenna briefly nudged Arthur’s cheek. “How do I have sex with my small, soft, very vulnerable boyfriend?”

“Um, maybe we’ll steer clear of words like ‘small’ and ‘soft’ for a while? Just a suggestion?”

But Tick was moving like he was listening to more forceful directives in his head, and Arthur was thinking about Destiny and primal arachnid instincts when he found himself gently tipped over onto his back and Tick nuzzling and kissing his chest. Which meant that Arthur’s still-resilient erection was poking into Tick’s abs.

“Arthur,” Tick said, sounding somewhere between thoughtful and dazed, “I think…”

And before Arthur could even lift his head all the way to look at him properly, the sensation went through him like an electric shock - some kind of gloriously warm, wet electric shock that came with a tongue exploring his cock like a tasty, strange new fruit. 

“Oh fuck,” Arthur said, his stomach in knots just as Tick worked on unraveling him from the core. “Oh fuck fuck fuck this is happening.”

For the first time in forever he was thankful for his instinctual reaction of fear and anxiety to literally everything - it was probably the only thing that had kept him from coming the instant the Tick started sucking his cock. And Jesus _the Tick was sucking his cock_. Arthur forced his head back into the pillow, because seeing Tick’s mouth around him was only making the pleasure build faster. Sure, there was no way this would last long, especially not with the noises of delight Tick was making, but even a few more seconds were worth it.

Arthur reached blindly down to touch him and the antennae came into his cautious grasp. So, so fucking weird and yet that feel was so uniquely the Tick that it sent a jolt through him. “Tick,” he gasped out, “this feels amazing. You feel amazing.”

And then his breath caught, and _everything_ caught and he felt so warm and full and yet light and liquid, and everything he was, was spilling out into Tick’s mouth. Which was utter bliss right up to the point when, in a second of startling clarity, Arthur realized he was gripping Tick’s antennae like they were steel rods rather than cartilage and nerves and… He couldn’t have let go faster if he was pulling his hands out of a fire. “Tick, are you-?”

“Fine, chum.” Tick got up to his knees, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and promptly toppled over onto his back next to Arthur. “Just a little dizzy.”

Alarmed, Arthur levered himself up on one elbow. “Are you sure? Did I break something?” The antennae looked fine, but who knew what havoc he’d caused internally? 

“Whoa.” The antennae flexed. “You made the room spin round!”

Arthur smiled sheepishly. “You kinda did that for me too, Tick.”

Tick’s eyes widened. “What centrifugal chicanery is afoot?!”

“I meant with your mouth.”

“Oh.” Tick touched his fingertips to his lips in remembrance. “I don’t know what came over me, chum. You just looked so… Like an AEGIS ready room snack bar.”

Arthur cautiously stroked along an antenna. “And… you liked it?”

“ _Loved_ it.”

“Not just because I liked it?”

Tick’s blue gaze caught his. “My head feels like a million threads all tangled up. But this, chum… this is as clear as a sunrise.”

Something sweetly intense swelled inside Arthur’s chest, pricking tears in his eyes he had to fiercely blink away as he leaned in and kissed Tick again. He wanted to spend hours exploring Tick’s body - this new skin that seemed simultaneously human and synthetic, unnaturally flawless but wrapped around veins and breath and warmth, not to mention big fleshy muscles that were soft to the touch but looked like they’d been carved out of clay by a stylus. And they’d have hours. But in the meantime Tick was still as rock-hard as actual clay, though the skin of his cock moved like silk under Arthur’s hand, a strangely not-blue fluid beading at the darkly swollen head.

Arthur’s heart was thrumming in his chest with something his brain would once have speedily defined as fear, churning his stomach and making him wrap himself tightly in a comforter. On the one hand he had an advantage over Tick because he actually knew what this was (at least, the textbook and porn versions). On the other, Tick never had the chance to cripple himself with anxiety comparing himself to people who did this professionally. Not to mention the fact that Tick’s body might make some of those professionals feel inadequate.

He wanted to say it out loud, to tell Tick how ridiculously fucking big he was, how hard, but he already knew that Tick wouldn’t take it as an ego boost so much as a possible criticism. Did Tick fantasize? Did he dream? Probably questions for another night.

So he ran a hand along the bare, hairless skin of Tick’s thigh, over his balls, up that thick shaft… And lowered his mouth to meet his hand.

It was somewhere in there, in the taste of salt and skin, in the stiff length parting his lips and filling his mouth, that it occurred to him that Tick had taken his virginity and - mysterious massive memory loss aside - he was taking Tick’s. And also, in Dot’s voice, that virginity was a patriarchal social construct designed to monetize women’s chastity and shame their sexuality, and if it had no application in medicine, it definitely wasn’t relevant when sucking the cock of someone who might not even be human.

Which wasn’t to say that Arthur wasn’t thinking very hard about what it would take to get Tick to fuck him - really, properly fuck him - without developing some nigh-invulnerable qualities of his very own. 

But this… He’d expected to love the concept of it more than the reality, having Tick in his mouth, feeling all of Tick’s tiny tensing movements and gasped breaths, hearing Tick say his name with confusion bleeding into pure, desperate want. But the reality was pretty damn fantastic, even if his jaw hurt and he needed to find new ways to breathe. All he wanted was to give Tick more, his own erection sleepily stirring again, probably baffled by this sudden turn of events after years of steadily similar bedtime jack-off sessions.

“Arthur…”

Except _more_ was probably way more than Tick could handle. Tick, who for all intents and purposes had never had sex, never watched porn, never sat through horribly awkward birds-and-bees talks with his mom, never even come… And was now just finding out all the answers without ever articulating the questions.

Arthur reached up and took Tick’s hand, squeezing, reassuring, and Tick said his name again in what was more a moan than a word, and spurted out what felt like it might as well be gallons of come in Arthur’s mouth, down Arthur’s throat, and Arthur might have surrendered to a lot of things in life but he was _not_ going to gag and choke giving his first blowjob. Hopefully he wasn’t going to drown either. And AEGIS would’ve given him a heads up if it was likely that Tick ejaculated arsenic or radium or battery acid, right?

Once he got past that initial surprise, the very sight of Tick flushed and wracked with ecstatic pleasure tugged hard at something inside him. Still gently sucking Tick’s sensitive cock, he shoved a hand down between his own legs - the hand that wasn’t tightly in Tick’s grip - and found his own erection achingly full and leaking. He brought himself off in a few strokes, lifting his head and watching Tick watch him come again, this time over Tick’s belly.

He expected Tick would say something, ask something, even though he couldn’t imagine being collected enough to answer for a long time. But Tick said nothing while Arthur cleaned them both up, as though his mom was still doing his laundry, and still said nothing as Arthur rearranged the blankets over them both and laid his head on Tick’s chest.

The city outside was dark and Arthur was slipping into that blissful postorgasmic fugue when it finally happened.

“Arthur?” 

“Yeah, Tick?”

“You’re really good at this sex thing, chum.”

He didn’t even have the energy to laugh. “So are you, Tick.”

“Can we do it again?”

“Not right now, Tick.”

“Okay, Arthur.”

And two big, muscular, bluish arms held him tightly.

***

Arthur woke from confusing dreams, sunlight streaming across the pillows and, tellingly, across the alarm clock that had very much not gone off. It was already 9am. He was late. Not late in the way he had spent years being late for college and work and all manner of doctors’ appointments, but late in the way that Tick would be convinced the city was about to get sucked into a miasma of crime and despair if they weren’t on patrol.

His gaze narrowed. He grabbed for his glasses. And, despite his room looking pretty much as it always did, everything came flooding back. “Tick?”

No response, although there was a faint buzzing of what might’ve been the local news. Arthur hopped out of bed, taking note of his very-much-nakedness, and grabbed up shorts and a t-shirt from the floor. Since Tick had moved in, it was almost unusual for the apartment not to have a superhero or mad scientist lounging around, or, in Overkill’s case, skulking around pretending to be a living shadow.

“Tick? Did Kevin bring you-” He stepped out of his bedroom and was brought up short by what was a very familiar sight: Tick making coffee. But it shouldn’t have been familiar at all.

“Good morning, Arthur! Coffee?” 

Arthur felt something else that was very familiar: a sinking feeling of dread, like all his self-worth had drained out of his body and was somehow squelching around his ankles. “Tick, you’re… You’re wearing your suit.”

Tick looked down at his uniformly blue body, and Arthur steeled himself for the cold shower of reality that was surely coming his way. “Yes! Dot brought it by about an hour ago! Arthur, what’s a smurf?”

Arthur blinked, unsure whether steeling himself was still necessary. “A smurf?”

“Yes.” Tick thrust a coffee mug into his hands. At least that was very real. And hot. “Dot said one of her paramedicine friends found a dead smurf near that bodega we protected yesterday. And it turned out to be my suit!”

“Oh. That’s… That’s good.” Arthur reached out tentative fingertips. “So you can still take it off?”

“I imagine so! Dot said something sciencey about bio-nano-something but maybe you can ask Dr. Karamarsbar.”

“And Dot left?”

“She wanted to give you a heads up about a new mission with Overkill and DB, but I told her you were all tuckered out from all that lovemaking we were doing last night.”

Arthur internally applauded himself for not doing a spit take with his coffee. “You told Dot that.” Of course he had.

“She said I should tell Joan too!”

“But you didn’t, right?”

“No, I always call her after evening patrol.” Tick laid a weighty hand on his shoulder. “Are you feeling all right, fella?”

“I, um…” Arthur took a contemplative gulp of coffee. “Tick, let’s talk for a minute, okay?”

Tick glanced over toward the front door, to where action and evil-thwarting surely lay, but he nodded and let Arthur take his hand. “Okay.”

Arthur tugged him back into the bedroom, even though the couch was closer. No one was here, but it still felt like the best place to be private and personal. He sat on the edge of the bed, the bed whose springs creaked and groaned when Tick joined him.

“Tick… Last night really happened, didn’t it?” He was stroking, rubbing at the spot between Tick’s thumb and forefinger, not sure anymore if this was fabric or skin or some combination of the two. “I don’t mean, like, temporally. I mean we kissed. We made love, like you said.”

Tick’s antennae radiated anxiety. “Didn’t we?”

“We did, Tick. But that’s what I mean… I’ve spent so much of my life thinking that what I was seeing and feeling and thinking wasn’t real. My whole life before I met you, people thought I was crazy. _I_ thought I was crazy. And your whole life before you met me… We don’t even know if that was four minutes or forty years.”

“Is this one of those break-up speeches?” The antennae craned forward. “Superheroes are always breaking up with their love interests to keep them safe. But I _am_ a superhero, Arthur! I’m nigh invulnerable!”

“I’m not breaking up with you, Tick. It’s always been us and it always will be. But you understand, don’t you, why we have to be clear with each other? It’s important that we know what’s real in this crazy world.”

For a moment he was sure Tick didn’t follow. But then Tick gently extracted his hand from Arthur’s grasp, bent his head, did something Arthur didn’t totally understand, and pulled away his cowl. Skin. Hair. Just like last night.

“I don’t know if this is the real me, chum. Maybe I’ll change again. But for now it’s real.”

Arthur cupped his cheek (did Tick ever shave?) and kissed him. “I don’t care what you look like, Tick. It was kind of shallow of me not to do this before.”

“But we can do lots of things now.” Tick’s brow furrowed. “Arthur, what are ‘lube’ and ‘foreplay’?”

“Dot talked to you about lube and foreplay?”

“No, Kevin did, when he brought me those clothes you asked for. He said lube and foreplay are the secrets to pleasurable penetrative intercourse, but I don’t know what any of those words mean except for ‘secrets’ and I’m not keen on those.”

Arthur paused. “Tick,” he said, “I love you, but please don’t talk to anyone else about our sex life.”

Blue eyes blinked. “I love you too, Arthur.”

“But honestly Kevin does have a...” It was a moment before Tick’s words caught up with his brain, igniting what felt like an inferno of emotion in his chest, leaving him breathless and choking on his own words. Tick helpfully patted his back. 

“Tick,” Arthur said finally, when he was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to cry or faint. “I’m going to need a big hug now.”

“All my hugs are big, chum.” 

Folded up in Tick’s arms, Arthur did cry, just a little bit, in what he hoped was a reasonably stoic and heroic fashion, tears leaking onto Tick’s chest. 

“Someone told me that no one really knows who they are… That life’s a quest to find out. I can’t imagine having a better partner on that journey than you, Arthur.” Tick’s fingertip very, very carefully wiped water from his cheek. “I’m talking about the romantic kind of partner,” he added.

“Yeah, I got that, Tick.” After several steadying breaths, Arthur wriggled free, wiping his face. “Isn’t it time for morning patrol?”

“I’m thinking it’s a lunchtime patrol kind of day. We can stop by that Urmanian place and get some FLTs!”

“Uh, sure.” He got to his feet. Probably wasn’t a bad idea to check in on all the latest intrigue from their Urmanian friends, enemies, and robot sidekicks. “I’ll just have a shower and then call Dot, check that Team Dark & Brooding isn’t doing something crazy without us.” Not that it would necessarily be safer with them, just better for Arthur’s overall peace of mind.

Tick stood up too. “That team name seems very on the nose.”

“It’s not actually their… Okay, shower.” Arthur pointed toward the bathroom and followed his own lead. The bathroom had seen better days before becoming home to an overheating Superian and several baby lobsters, but at least the plumbing worked. He reached in and turned on the water, hopping out of his clothes as he waited for it to heat up. “Hey, Tick?”

Tick’s head appeared at the door.

“You want to take a shower with me?”

Tick eyed the shower curtain suspiciously. “What do I do?”

“You don’t have to do anything. Just stand there, get wet, maybe soap up my back for me…” Arthur stepped into the tub. “And I can show you what lube and foreplay mean.”

Which was a line he couldn’t imagine ever saying to anyone else, male or female, human or otherwise, not even for all the money in all the banks in the city. But then no one else had antennae that made a little interested motion at the thought, no one else was his partner-lover-boyfriend, and no one else was the Tick.

Moments later, Arthur discovered exactly how the suit came off.


End file.
